[Yediot Ahronot-Hebrew, 21Dec06] Smadar Peri - After the recent publicity over the plan to dig a canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, a stormy debate began in the Egyptian Parliament, whose members are coming out against "the Israeli conspiracy to choke to death the Suez Canal." During the debate, assistant foreign minister Abdul Aziz Sayyif al-Nasser, who heads the ministry's legal division, said: "Eilat, whose older name was Umm Rushrush, belongs to the Palestinians." He was presenting the opinion of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. His predecessor, Dr. Nabil al-Arabi, who was head of the Foreign Ministry's legal division and headed the Egyptian delegation at the Taba talks, also declared forcefully that "Eilat belongs to the Palestinians." Opposition parliamentarians brought in legal experts and geographers to prove that Eilat belonged to Egypt until it was occupied by Israel in 1949.
2006-12-22 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive